


I can barely breathe

by Neverwaswise



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Comfort, Eventual snuggling, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Post Season 2, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 23:41:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16628738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverwaswise/pseuds/Neverwaswise
Summary: What do you do when you realize your best friends are perfect for each other?What do you do when you realize you can’t survive just being fuck buddies with said friends?Trevor has some ideas.





	1. Chapter 1

He wakes up to the smell of bread baking. His eyes crack open just enough to take in the space. Small nondescript room with wooden walls and watery winter light reaching in through the stretched hide window covering.

And a distinctive trail of clothes scattered over the floor.

He sighs with a bone deep warmth that was quickly dissolving him into a puddle on the bed. His body hurt like it did after beating the shit out of some monster that wanted to eat him. Of course, it hadn’t been a monster trying to eat him last night.

At least, that wasn’t the most accurate way to put it.

He may have eaten a monster himself last night. He rolled his jaw, and yeah, definitely an ache there.

He didn’t have wild nights of throughly entertaining and increasingly inventive sex often enough if the warm weariness of the next morning reminded him more of hunting than sex.

Not even thirty and already an old man.

Ah, fuck, there went the warm feelings.

He turns his head creakily at the sound of soft snores.

Sypha, face half smothered in a pillow. Alucard nuzzled contentedly into her shoulder, an arm thrown over her back.

Trevor sits up slowly, blinking sleepily at them.

They look pretty as a picture. A throughly debauched picture the likes of which he has never seen. But like… someone put them there on purpose. Beautiful and that beauty exaggerated by their places beside one another.

Like they fit together.

He remembered the way they’d moved together in the dim firelight. The way they’d reached and gasped and smiled into each other's hungry, open mouthed kisses.

The two of them fit so well now too, curled together like kittens.

With the scarred old cur from the yard watching over them.

Trevor turned his head away and frowned.

Yeah, he was young, but no one would know it from looking at him. Not after the years on the road. The things he’d seen. And done.

Uneasy on the simple cream colored linens, Trevor slipped gently out of bed and bent down for the clothes on the floor, ignoring the twinging pull of the muscles all over his body and thesour feeling in his belly.

He dumped the pile on the floor in order to slip into one of the sleep shirts their host had left on a chair for them. Then he made his way downstairs.

Stepping off of the stairs, he finds their current host, a tall young dragon in human form, carefully fussing over his small iron oven. Trevor hoped the bread came out of it less scorched this time than yesterday’s. They’d eaten it, but can’t a man dream. The man sees him and shoots up to his impressive and willowy height, blushing and beaming all at once.

“Mr. Belmont! I didn’t know you were up! Good morning!”

Trevor just managed to grumble back what he thought was possibly a suitable reply. It wasn’t the kid’s fault he had terrible taste in men. Trevor wasn’t going to be an ass to him just because that level of chipper this early was fucking annoying. Because Trevor had been on adventures. And he’d experienced emotional growth like the kid wouldn’t believe.

Trevor was a trove of self control and maturity.

The little dragonling they were currently renting the room from until the storm passed, handed him a piece of yesterday’s bread, toasted and generously slathered in preserves to vainly mask the flavor.

Trevor was able to cut a question through the kid’s babbling.

“I need a bucket and water to wash our clothes.”

The kid finally noticed the bundle he had barely contained beneath one arm. And before Trevor knew it, he was down in the basement with an already filled washbucket and brick of soap.

After saying no to the fifth offer to wash the clothes for him, Trevor shoved the entire piece of toast in his mouth, grabbed the kid by the scruff and dragged him up the stairs. Once the menace was deposited on the ground floor and the door closed firmly between them, Trevor turned and sighed loudly before clomping his way back down the stairs.

The water in the washbasin was cold but relatively clean. The soap had some kind of herbal smell coming off of it that made him sneeze. But the work was calming to the jittery feeling sitting in his hands and thighs.

His mind was full of the taste, smell, feel of his friends last night.

What was this feeling.

It felt like his old friend loss. But that was fucking ridiculous. Because what the hell had he lost. Besides some forms of virginity he hadn’t realized he still had.

There again, the image of his companions curled together like they belong to each other.

Fuck.

He needed to just stay out of their way for the day, let them work that shit out. Let it progress in its inevitable way.

But fuck he hadn’t expected it to turn out this way. Well ok, he’d kind of always thought Sypha and Alucard would get together. Make a bunch of part vampire doctor wizard babies and go on to change the world magically into a better place. But hadn’t expected it to start with a literal nightmare.

It had been the first time they’d been near to hand when they were all sleeping deeply at the same time. Ever. Because during the hunt for Dracula, one of them had always been awake. And none of them had ever felt safe enough to sleep deeply. And then it was each to their own echoey too big rooms and the endless days of tasks and teasing and no one really being sure if they were still a team.

And then Alucard had heard of an illness out in a nearby town, Trevor didn’t really ask many questions about how, that he thought was probably some sort of poisoning of their water source. But, Alucard had allowed, it could also be some kind of monster. And then he’d dragged them all out of the castle to investigate.

What it had ended up being was a wee baby dragon hoarding the belongings of the dead he found in the countryside. And then, because the belongings made him sad, hiding them under a log in the woods and forgetting where he put it.

So, the squirrel dragon was apparently poisoning his village with something Alucard found decomposing in one of the disgusting troves. And the village was saved. Right in time for one of the big winter storms to swing in and bury them inside the dragon’s house.

And they had been given the dragon’s bedroom as thanks for the service they’d rendered. And after the usual bickering, settled down to a warm and restful sleep.

Until Trevor was woken in the night to an elbow almost breaking his face.

He cursed and sat up, reaching for his weapon, when he recognized the cool flesh beneath his hand and the voice crying out in the faint light of the banked fire.

Sypha was up at his other side, hands up and hovering, uncertain. But Trevor knew nightmares and while the terrified whimpering and shouts made him want to cut the damn dead bastard’s head off again, instead he rose up on his knees and struck his friend across the face.

Then those dandelion eyes opened with the fear of a child looking out at him and suddenly Trevor was saying nonsense things and gathering Alucard up in his arms. Things like “it’s ok” and “i have you” and whatever the fuck else. Just anything. He would say anything to get Alucard to stop shaking like that. Sypha had been petting both of their heads, probably saying the same kind of useless thing he was.

And then, when Alucard had grown still enough to begin apologizing, Trevor had pushed him back enough to tell him to shut the fuck up about apologizing. Sypha had smacked him on the back of his head but then agreed with him.

And then none of them were really in the mood to sleep. So they all crawled out of bed and huddled beneath one blanket by the fire and talked. About what, Trevor couldn’t really remember, but somehow in the small hours of the morning, Alucard had reached out to Sypha, drew her that small measure of space closure. And then they were kissing and touching and Trevor was about to drop the blanket and flee into the cold night air when Alucard had turned to him and hadn’t even needed to reach out, just leaned forward and Trevor was there, licking the taste of Sypha off of his lips.

And that, had been that.

A crazy amazing fuck after a nightmare and an unusual amount of vulnerability.

When the three of them were all locked together in close quarters.

Completely understandable. Nothing to make assumptions about. He was just pitifully susceptible to peer pressure.

It was fine.

Trevor startles out of the memory of last night by the sound of someone struggling to get the door open. When he looks up, he realizes it isn’t because the door os particularly difficult to open, but because the person invading the basement hasn’t awoken enough to completely open their eyes or coordinate their limbs.

He watches, fascinated as the zombie makes its way down the steps without breaking its neck, clutching haphazardly at the blanket around its shoulders.

Only when Sypha has safely sunk into a pile on the floor beside him, does she finally speak.

“We have absolutely nothing to get done today. What are you doing?”

Trevor snorts, “Thought I’d work on my pottery skills while we wait for the storm to pass.”

Sypha blinks blearily at the wash bucket, “You’re going to wash my pants paper thin if you keep scrubbing them like that.”

He hums back in response. She leans against his leg as he straddles the wash bucket and he feels the painful, squeezing urge to move away from her.

But after he has cleaned two more things, she is awake enough to push the blanket off of her shoulders and join him in the chore. She rises to throw Trevor’s shirt over the line to dry before walking back over to the pile and clicking her tongue against her teeth. Bending over for a moment, she comes back up with Alucard’s black coat in her hands.

“How does one get Minotaur spit out of gold brocade,” she fusses with a fake pout.

Trevor eyes the coat, the coat so similar to the one that had perished the same day as Alucard’s father. The gold stitching and thick, dark wool cut in the style Alucard deemed “sturdy and practical for travel”. It indeed had a small stripe of dark Minotaur saliva staining the threading around one button hole. But that was by far the least terrible battle scar this particular coat reincarnation was sporting.

Trevor took in the hole in the shoulder Sypha’s thumb was currently poking through as she glared at the stained button hole.

And then he was laughing.

And she was joining him.

And he decided something.

Fuck his whining. These were people he cared about. And he was old enough to know how to step out of people’s way and let them get on with finding their happiness. He hadn’t lost his friends last night. He’d just realized he was a bit more pathetic than than even he had believed. 

The affection, the true belonging he had seen between his friends would follow its natural progression. And he would save himself some pain and stay out of it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :)

“I couldn’t remember what the last thing on your list was, is this even close?” Trevor says as he walks up to Alucard in his lab tucked away in a corner of the Belmont hold.

Alucard looks over and recoils, “What is that?”

Trevor looks down at it with him,“The label says “Manibus simia””

“Trevor, what … I’m making antibiotics. What in the fucking world would I want with a monkey foot.”

“I have no idea what you need for magic. Here’s your other shit,” he sets down a normal assortment of boxed glassware and some candles, couple of stirring rods, “You break more equipment than I do and you aren’t even fighting anything. Unless you’ve been fighting monsters in here and leaving me bored and oblivious in the hallway all of this time.”

“Oh? You are bored?” Alucard says, eyes darkening somehow, not going red, just… dark, “Would you like me to help you with that?”

Trevor sighed, “Please, something to do other than run fetching errands for the two weirdos would be much appreciated.”

Alucard steps closer, pulling the jar of monkey feet out of his hands and setting it on the table. Trevor looks down at the pale hands that are suddenly brushing lightly along his sleeves from his shoulders to his wrists.

“I hope you appreciate the effort it takes to set my work aside to tend to you needs,” Alucard says softly.

Well, honestly he says it in a purr. A soft, rich purr that Trevor remembers like his brain has trapped it in velvet inside his skull. And like that he is back to the little room in the dragon’s house.

He is taking a step back before he ever thinks about doing so. And then he is standing there like a brained puppy, staring at Alucard standing there with his hands holding the empty air.

“Actually, I think I can amuse myself a bit longer,” Trevor mumbles with a tasteful little cough thrown in there for nonchalance. And then he is fleeing smoothly the fuck out of the lab. Hopefully he’d eventually make his way to the castle and the kitchens.

 

It is a grey rainy day and Sypha is pissed because she’s looked all over for this book. Someone had put it in the wrong place. Probably Alucard. Because sure, indexes were important. But were they ‘important’ enough for the absentminded doctor to give them more than a passing thought? Not likely.

And once she’d actually found the right book, the index had failed to mention that, besides the title on the cover, it was in some kind of indecipherable language.

So she was headed to the other side of the trove of books, to hopefully find a book that could give her a way to find which way was up in this one.

At least that’s what she was doing until she saw Trevor climbing one of the bookshelves at the far end of a row as she passed.

She stopped in her tracks and watched, because even fully clothed and doing something incredibly stupid, he was a pleasure to watch. And if he fell and died like this it would be a shame to miss such a stunningly ignoble end. She was really doing the world a favor, witnessing this.

There is suddenly a resounding crack. And Trevor’s arm snaps up to grab something just in time to ride the collapsing bookshelf to the ground and land on the ground like a cat, already inspecting the spill of gold trailing in his hand like a waterfall of sunlight.

Sypha snorts, because this ridiculous idiot, and walks up behind him, wrapping her arms around his chest.

“Broke his neck for a pretty shawl,” she says into the warmth of his shirt.

“That my tombstone?” He rumbles back causally.

“Yes, do you prefer granite or marble.”

“I’ve never been threatened quite this much while also being snuggled on.”

“I really don’t believe that,” Sypha replied.

Trevor grunts, “You’re right. I’m completely irresistible to monsters and highwaymen alike.”

“Those are not the only two types of people who have threatened you.”

“Damn, you must be a witch to have figured that out.”

Sypha laughs, “Or one of the two people who have tolerated your presence for more than an hour. Oh, by the way, I brought snacks.”

Trevor groans as she waves a sticky bun in front of his nose. She grins at the sound because he is helpless to the offer of sticky buns and they both know it.

“Where the hell were you hiding that.”

Sypha slides under the arm he lifts to grab the sticky bun, and then pulls herself tight to his chest with a deep laugh, a delightful heat beginning to light in her belly, “Why don’t you come and find out.”

And then she rises up on her toes to kiss him.

And he grows still as stone beneath her fingers. She pulls back and looks up into his face, “Trevor?”

He’s looking down at her, sort of. Mostly those warm grey eyes were looking at her shoulder.

“Trevor? Are you ok?”

He didn’t really answer her, just cleared his throat and stepped back. Her arms fell from his sides as she stared at him.

“Just remembered,” he said, “Alucard needed some more of those plants. The ones with the flowers. Better go get those before I forget again.”

And then he was walking away with whatever that gold thing was, clutched in his fist. Sypha could still feel the damp in her robe from her walk to the hold. She knew for a fact that Alucard was not about to drive Trevor into a thunderstorm to harvest components.

She watched him until he turned out of sight. And then she looked down at the ground and frowned.

 

 

 

“He’s leaving us, Alucard.”

“We can’t be certain.”

“Well he can certainly leave us if we do nothing.”

“That is perhaps very true. But what he wants is a large factor in this.”

“Its… yes that is true. But he doesn’t want to leave us. Does he?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! Hope your day went well. Hang in there.


	3. Chapter 3

Alucard takes the empty vials of medicine from the bedside table, replacing them with three more. The woman is lying on the bed, her son stirring her porridge to cool it before feeding it to her. Hers had been a difficult pregnancy. One he suspected was complicated by the not entirely human nature of the mother. She seemed relatively human on the surface. But he knew monster blood when he smelled it. And with her almost constant spotting, he’d smelled it plenty. He thought perhaps something of the woodlands judging from the health of the fields outside the village.

After he has iterated the instructions for the medicine to her, the son watching carefully, Alucard says his goodbyes for the day and leaves the house. The sun is starting to throw long shadows and creep towards the horizon though the day is still bright enough to not worry overmuch about the coming dark. The villagers are still out and about, their children playing in the streets, chattering and screeching as children do. Alucard finds his eyes following them, a hollowed out feeling behind his eyes that he doesn’t quite understand. Perhaps he is just tired. Perhaps he is hearing the echoes of the children who died to the hordes of the night.

Weeks of practice and long night talks with Sypha have him pulling his thoughts back from that edge and beginning the long walk home.

Once he catches sight of the castle, he also sniffs a familiar scent and follows it off the path.

He finds Trevor just off the road, sitting on a fallen tree with a pile of plants by his side. Not medicinal herbs. It looks almost like the hunter has been out here picking flowers all afternoon.

And now he is sitting down, not doing much of anything. His face is turned up to the sinking sun, eyes watching the branches wave above him.

Alucard drifts into a matching stillness on the edge of the small clearing, transfixed by the rare sight of Trevor relaxed and still, body long and beautiful in the delicate play of light and shadows, bright yellow and purple blossoms blooming by his boots.

Alucard shrugs off the paralysis his admiration settled on him and steps into the edge of Trevor’s vision. The hunter sits up a bit and grunts at his approach. Nonverbal permission that Alucard has long since grown used to. He still rolls his eyes so that the brute can’t miss it as he settles down beside him.

“How are the potions coming along,” Trevor asks.

“You mean are the potions successfully reducing the symptoms of her anemia to allow her and her baby to successfully survive the pregnancy?”

“Yeah and that too,” Trevor mumbles.

Alucard huffs, “I believe she will do just fine.”

Trevor makes a noncommittal noise that Alucard knows means Trevor is relieved to hear it. Alucard glances over at his hunter and feels a swell of something sappily sentimental valiantly attempting to fight its way free. Alucard wrestles it back under his control, however, all the while wishing he did not need to.

“I feel like if you stopped insisting on ignorance, you would actually be a passable lab assistant. Gifts of monkey feet excluded of course.”

Instead of responding, Trevor reached up and touched the gold coat Alucard was wearing beneath his cloak. When Trevor had presented the coat to Alucard, he had honestly been shocked. And then he had felt like a complete idiot. Because Trevor gave the two of them gifts all of the time. He’d given Alucard his entire ancestral home, for starters.

But it wasn’t just that moment, which Sypha and himself both agreed had been a very ridiculously dramatic speech. Trevor grumbled that they were a couple of ungrateful bastards and why was he friends with them. Alucard didn’t really know why Trevor, a human that could be fairly described as a feral alcoholic, would even give Alucard and Sypha the time of day. But he did know that Trevor was far more than the drinking and the sadness.

Trevor was one of those people who just did things, thoughtful, helpful things that reminded you that they were thinking of you as they went about their day. Which was just a bastard move when he was usually pissing you off at the same time.

So, upon receiving the gift of the coat, that was apparently made of a special silk that would resist fire and stop arrows, Alucard wore it almost constantly. And had caught Trevor following it with his eyes when he thought Alucard wouldn’t see. And those eyes had filled Alucard with a warmth he wanted to wrap around himself like the coat.

Like now, as Trevor ran his coarse, talented fingers down the lapel of the ridiculously beautiful coat. Alucard glanced up that Trevor and suddenly wanted to eat him alive. Not in the entirely literal way he knew in his heart he was capable of doing, no matter how good he tried to be.

But in the hot, slick, delicious way they had all shared that night. Hell, had it only been two weeks ago?

Trevor’s rumbling voice pulled Alucard only partially out of the trance the memory had sunk him into.

“You enjoy my gifts, admit it.”

Alucard’s breath caught and his belly began to burn, a trained response to that rich, heavy, gravelly voice. God, Trevor had tasted so good. It is physically painful to not reach out and pull Trevor into a kiss.

But the painful slap of Trevor pulling away in the lab before sitsnear the edge of his thoughts, like a pail of water propped above a door.

So, instead of ravishing the hunter right here by the road, Alucard says, in a voice that is definitely communicating things he has no ability to hide at the present moment, “You are a man of many gifts, yes.”

Trevor blinks and… Alucard swallows. Hard. Because a color is rushing into Trevor’s cheeks that Alucard only ever saw when the man was drunk or… oh god, that night.

“Well, its awkward now. Nice work,” Trevor abruptly says, snatching his hand back to himself and grunting as he rose to his feet.

For a man as agile as he was, he certainly could move like an old man when the mornings were cold or the years of fighting clutched to close at his mortal bones.

Alucard’s hand is out, catching at Trevor’s warm fingers.

“There is more daylight left,” Alucard asks softly, “Please, stay with me.”

Trevor’s eyes narrow with alarming suspicion, “Why.”

“Its nice sitting with you,” Alucard replies simply.

Trevor doesn’t really seem to have anything he can say to that.

Except, because Trevor always has something to say, “What did you do.”

“What?”

“Why are you hiding from Sypha.”

Alucard snorts.

“Damnit, Belmont. You’re so dramatic. I’m not hiding from Sypha. I just got back from the village.” He lifts his bag of medical supplies a little to emphasize.

‘You came out looking for me?”

The surprise in the hunter’s voice is like a knife to Alucard’s guts. And he’s about to say something in return when a horrid gust of wind blows up out of nowhere and whips at his head in a flurry of leaves and pollen and flower petals. He’s just begun to reach up and grab at his hair to pull it out of his face when he hears a peculiar sound.

He crooks his fingers to part his hopelessly tangled hair out of his eyes. To find the last hunter of the house of Belmont falling into a bed of wild flowers, giggling like a loon.

Alucard watches, transfixed.

It’s like watching a wolf spin a top. It throws him off so completely, he forgets about the mess of his hair, until Trevor peels open a teary eye and looks up at him again, before dissolving back into helpless laughter.

Alucard clicks his tongue against his teeth and starts trying to push back his hair, though not entirely succeeding, since Trevor was right there, distractingly laid out in a literal bed of flowers.

About to give himself a hernia laughing at Alucard’s expense. But it wasn’t any less beautiful for that. He shoves his hair away from his face and sinks into the plants beside Trevor. Because it is hurting him to not be touching.

He runs a hand over Trevor’s shoulder in a faint, barely there touch that Trevor might not even notice because the hunter, still sniffing and snickering and wiping at his watering eyes, sits up and sinks a warm hand into Alucard’s hair.

“Come here, ridiculous man,” Trevor says, before using the other hand to reach up and pull a leaf out of the atrocity of Alucard’s hair.

He doesn’t care though. As Trevor continues to mock and tease and choke on hiccups of laughter. Because Trevor is also pushing and pulling Alucard, arranging himto lie his head across his thighs, combing Alucard’s hair out with careful fingers.

Alucard melts in the man’s lap, the evening sun orange and barely felt on his skin as Trevor’s hands touch him and the smile never quite leaves that gentle, scarred face.


	4. Chapter 4

Trevor is in so much fucking trouble.

Why? Well, many reasons. The inevitable failing of his liver. The looming threat of Sypha figuring out who took her pink scarf for its superior insulating ability.

The gorgeous golden man unconscious in his lap.

It was ridiculous really, that anyone ever thought this bastard was fully human. Real people just didn’t look like that. Like every piece of furniture, every cloud, every fucking piece of dust in a sunbeam was strategically placed to make the idiot look like some sort of overly flattering portrait of himself.

Trevor drew his fingers through Alucard’s hair again. God, it was like silk.

There was a single green leaf tangled in the hair near the top of the sleeping man’s head. Trevor had left it there. Because, fuck, because it was fucking adorable. So much so he thought he might choke on it. Because, as he softly touched the man’s head, he felt like something was crawling up out of his chest and trying to choke him.

And it hurt.

He must have shifted somehow as he creeped on his friend like a pathetic leech, because Alucard began to shift, his cheek nuzzling into Trevor’s thigh.

“Mm, you’re warm.”

“It helps that I make my own blood instead of stealing other people’s.”

Alucard doesn’t glare like he once would have. Instead he just snorts and opens his sleep heavy eyes to look up at him.

God, so much fucking trouble.

“We should head back or Sypha is going to spend all evening calling us lazy lieabouts,” Alucard says,

“And then she’ll make us make dinner.”

“Can you make that bread?” Alucard suddenly asks, eyes intent, “Since you’ll already be cooking.”

Alucard has a thing for bread with unhealthy amounts of molasses baked in.

Trevor just looks down at him and starts laughing, because Alucard looks so excited about bread and its just so fucking cute.

He brushes his fingers through Alucard’s hair as he chuckles. But Alucard doesn’t bother to ask what he is laughing about.

Instead, Alucard sits up a little.

And presses their lips together. Softly. Gently. Cool as a drop of rain.

Trevor’s heart slams once in his chest and he freezes.

But there is nowhere to go. Because Alucard is literally lying on top of him. And the dreamy look in his eyes is slowly dissolving into that intent, focused look of a scientist.

“What is wrong?” Alucard asks.

“Nothing is wrong. Just haven’t taken a dump in a while. We should head back. So I can do that.”

Alucard pulls back from Trevor just slightly, eyes peeling Trevor apart, starting with the skin. But he doesn’t say anything like what Trevor is thinking he is going to say.

“Do you have anything in your pile of herbs for the soup?”

Trevor blinks at him.

“I don’t know. You’re the doctor.”

“You don’t have to be a doctor to know which herbs are soup herbs,”

“Well i’m not whatever you need to be to know soup herbs either. I’m just a smelly old drifter.”

“Which explains why your soup always tastes like that.”

“Yeah, why the hell do you two let me cook. What is wrong with you.”

“We are desperate for a break from doing all of the work.”

“What work. You ‘scientists’ just play with yourselves all day and leave me to do anything resembling a chore.”

Alucard blinks at him, definitely catching the innuendo and then he says, “You think science is play?”

“You trying to play this like you don’t find it fun?”

Alucard has to give him that. And they both know it. So he smiles up at Trevor and doesn’t say anything

Trevor pushes Alucard off him and stands.

“Yeah, still need to take a dump. I guess I could drop it on these flowers. But… seems like a shame.”

“Ah, finally, you’ve gained enough class to not take a shit on beautiful things.”

“Not today anyway. But sleep with one eye open flowers. I’m always ready to ruin your day.”

He can feel Alucard’s eyes watching him as he helps him to his feet, and as they head back to the house. But, thank god, he doesn’t say anything about how much of a dumbass Trevor is. How obvious it is that Trevor is making a big deal out of nothing.

Just sex, Trevor keeps telling himself as they walk to the castle. Just a fuck in the fields between old friends. What is your fucking problem.

But he knows. He can’t do it again. Wouldn’t have a prayer of surviving their touch again without…showing whatever this was strangling him. Even now, as they bickered and laughed on the path towards their home, he felt like he was dying.


	5. Chapter 5

Alucard goes looking for Sypha when they get back. Trevor has wandered off to make more questionable soup with his arm full of herbs. Alucard had taken a very close look at all of those herbs to make sure none of it would poison them too badly before sending him off grumbling about not needing a minder.

He finds Sypha reading in one of the castle’s libraries.

“What are you reading?”

“I have no idea. I might need to find the books that explain it. But mostly I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“Trevor.”

“Ah.”

A beat of silence. Then Alucard sighs, “I have also been thinking about Trevor.”

Her eyes flash up from her book, large and blue and reading him far easier than they did the book in her lap.

“What conclusions have you come to?”

“I think that… I think that he wants to leave. I do not think he find this. Us. To his preference.”

Sypha looks at him for a long moment.

“Really.”

“He doesn’t want us, Sypha. Daily he makes that painfully clear.”

Sypha looks down at her book, turns a page.

“Do you remember the day we left you here? In this big empty house after the death of your father?”

Alucard has to look up at the ceiling, because yes he remembers. He remembers echoes of stone crumbling and the songs of birds and the twist in his chest of please please don’t leave me here please.

Remembered Sypha’s gentle, kind words and Trevor’s finally friendly smiles. The ringing beauty of their laughter as they prepared to leave him with his hands empty and his skin as cold as the day he had dragged his broken body into the coffin beneath Gresit.

“Yes, I recall.” He says, voice carefully flat. Though, he knows, he can remember the day with less pain now than he might have. If things had turned out different.

“I honestly bought your bullshit,” she says, “About taking some time alone to relearn the castle. To begin your mother’s work again,” Sypha was somehow smiling and grimacing at the same time. The expression was one she picking up from Trevor,though he was pretty sure she was unaware of it, “When we left, I thought we were helping you,” she lifts a hand to point accusingly at him, “Because you are a very convincingly apathetic bastard when you want to be. Or used to be, I’ve got you figured out now.”

Alucard smiles, “I’m not as worried about that as I probably should be.”

Sypha sniffs and sweeps a hand over the open page of her book, “Did you know that Trevor was the one who made us come back?”

Alucard’s smile falls away and he feels his bones resonate, like a bell struck, “What?”

“We were heading down the road, all the while I’m working like a woman trying to get a wild dog into the house. Trying to assure him that we were a team now, that he could think of me as a permanent peice of his life. Always beside him. And all the while he has this strange look on his face. Like he doesn’t really believe me, honestly, isn’t even sure he should try. But he’s also looking off at nothing at the same time, like he’s thinking about something else.”

Alucard watches her pet the book, eyes distant with remembering, and he wants to move closer to her, wants to see what she is seeing. Because he knows how Sypha builds trust. And it is a warm, happy sort of teasing that he loves to watch her wield. Loves to watch Trevor respond to.

She’d brought it to bed, that one time in the warm room, with the storm all around them. She’d laughed and kissed and teased until, he now suspected, Trevor stopped listening to what he really wanted and fell into bed with them. That knowledge was growing in Alucard, as he stood here, like a scream finally heard over the wind. They had pulled Trevor into something he didn’t want. They’d never really asked him if he’d wanted that. With them. Just twisted him around with the friendship they had forged and dragged him under.

And he’d just tried to kiss him. Out there. When the man was being so tender with him.

He’d tried to take from him again something that had never really been offered.

What had, a few moments ago, been a baffling and yet still dazzlingly precious, moment alone with Trevor on a beautiful afternoon…

What had once been a sweet, aching memory of finally getting a taste of what he had wished for so strongly with both of them.

It had turned to ash in his mouth.

“Alucard?” Sypha called.

He pulled his thoughts in enough to look back, to see her. And the sad expression on her face.

“He looked like that. Exactly like that. Like he was about to puke. And then he told me to turn the horses around.”

Alucard had to look away then. Had to. Because a trembling had started up in his chest. It was painful. To know that Trevor had cared enough to bring them back to him, to the castle. Alucard had always assumed it had been Sypha. But, now that she’d said it, of course it had been Trevor. Of course Trevor had known. What demons they’d left him alone with.

Because, Sypha knew the value of a family, of other people being always close at hand. Losing some and always carrying the fear of losing them all.

But Trevor. The orphan hunter, knew the terror and agony of being alone. Of a world where your family was dead and you could do nothing. Nothing at all to bring them back.

Of course it had been him. That idiot.

And how they’d repaid him.

He heard a sharp huff of breath and the sound of Sypha snapping her book closed.

“Obviously from the look on your face I have not gotten my point across,” Sypha stood and planted a hand on her hip, “The two of you are so similar, its like a matching set of idiots. All for me.”

Then she stepped up to him and drew him gently to her with a hand. He bent down easily to her so that she could plant a nuzzling kiss to his mouth, then his cheek.

“Come with me and I will show you,” she said.

Alucard frowned at her, but followed when she led him out into the corridor nonetheless.


	6. Chapter 6

Trevor heard them coming down the hall. Heard the heavy door more suited to a fortress entrance than a kitchen, swing open. But he didn’t turn to acknowledge it. Because, despite the entirety of his knowledge and attention being entirely focused on the hearth and its contents…

The fucking soup was still burning.

“Ach,” he heard Sypha gag, “The soup is burning.”

“I know that!” Trevor shouted as he dunked the end of a long spoon into the pot and started stirring, “Its not even on the damn fire anymore! Fucking hell.”

Sypha stepped forward and set her bare hands on the definitely scorching hot iron of the cook pot.

Trevor kept stirring furiously. Damn, he hadn’t put anything in there that would make little black flakes like that. it was so fucking burnt.

“Not sure why we’re even trying to save it. Its ruined anyway.”

“No its not,” Sypha answered reassuringly, “It’s just going to have some…exotic flavor.”

Trevor gave her a look, “Its going to have the exotic flavor of burnt.”

Sypha’s laugh came strong from her chest and pulled an answering laugh from him.

He noticed Alucard was still standing near the door, not saying a word. Or even moving.

So he startled when the other man spoke, “Did you mean to put garlic in the water bucket?”

Trevor let go of the spoon as Sypha drew her hands back, the murdered soup hopefully cooled now.

“Yeah, I thought they’d be nice, brighten the place up a bit.”

Alucard looked from the bursts of purple flowers to him, “You do know garlic doesn’t hurt me, right? Garlic laced water is just going to make my breath stink.”

“I wasn’t going to feed you the water. Your breath already stinks anyways. Not much harm the garlic can do,” Trevor snapped back.

And Trevor just knew Alucard’s next move was going to be a very rude gesture and a smile. One of those smirking smiles that lit Trevor up so much he didn’t have the power to feel ridiculous for verbally rasseling with Alucard like they were a couple of sparring puppies. It always just felt too good to stop.

But the gesture never came, and a frown that almost looked like a wince came over Alucard’s face and his eyes slid to the fire.

Trevor looked over at Sypha because she was the one who explained shit to him when Alucard was sulking. Though that mood switch had been fast enough to leave him reeling.

Sypha reached out with a hand and ran it softly down his arm and then caught hold of his hand, latched on tight before he could pull away.

“Trevor,”she said, “Alucard and I would like to discuss something with you. Will you speak to us?”

Everything about that made Trevor’s brain lock up because, oh shit, he had never heard anything quite like that tone coming from Sypha. Didn’t know what it meant. Ok, actually, behind the part of him that was screaming oh shit oh shit oh shit he definitely knew what she wanted to talk about. Why she wanted to talk about it now, he didn’t know. What he had done to bring this conversation about, he had no clue. Of course, the thought that he had had any influence over the decision they had obviously come to was another example of why they had made that choice.

Because he was a piece of shit who didn’t care enough, didn’t think of anyone but himself. Didn’t know how to draw close and reach out gently like the hand on his arm. Didn’t know how to stand still and be contemplatively silent like the tall, beautiful man across the room. He just didn’t… have enough. Of any of it.

But he did know how to bluff. God, he wasn’t evenly slightly drunk enough to bluff through this. But he would do it anyway.

When all he wanted to do was run.

Run and start the lonely road all over again.

Though the weak, pathetic part of him, which, honestly, took up more than its fair share of him, was begging to be given another chance. To be considered. He would be so good. Try so hard for them.

For the chance to keep them.

He thought he might start shaking. Because he wasn’t sure he could do it again. Go back out there alone. Walk back out into the cold. He’d started to feel warmth lately. Felt it seeping deeper. Almost to his bones.

He’d felt so warm.

But, somehow keeping all of this off of his face, he let Sypha lead him to the richly polished wood of the table, let her set him down on the bench. Watched Alucard draw close at her gesture to stand solemnly on the other side, watching him with eyes the color of distant suns.

And then there was silence between them.

He was surprised when Sypha was not the one to break it.

“I did not realize you were the one who decided to come back,” Alucard said.

While it was a sentence out of nowhere, Trevor immediately knew what he was talking about. It had not been a good day. He’s pretty sure Alucard doesn’t remember most of the afternoon it took them to come back.

Because they’d walked into the castle, walked the halls looking for him.

And found him by following the too familiar stink of fresh blood.

Found him in another dusty and lavish room amongst hundreds of other almost identical rooms. And what Trevor had seen had stopped the breath in his lungs.

Because Alucard had been lying on his side in a war zone of shattered glass and fragmented wood, his eyes staring at the far wall of the room, no sign he had heard them arrive. His hands were bloody, silver lined glass from the demolished mirror above the dresser still stuck in the pale flesh of his hands.

His eyes hadn’t even been red. He’d just lain there and breathed as his blood soaked into the floor.

Only two weeks after the final death of his family. And they’d left him alone.

“I woke up to my head in your lap,” Alucard’s gentle voice was saying now, “Sypha was doing something agonizing to my hands-”

“I was pulling five inch blades of glass out of your ungrateful hands,” Sypha cut in.

“My hands and all of the rest of me will never be ungrateful to you,” Alucard answered softly.

Sypha met his gaze for a long moment. And Trevor tried not to gasp at the sharpness it drove into his chest. Because, while he hadn’t seen it often in his life, he could recognize that look for what it was. Could see the world it created around the two of them.

Then Alucard looked at Trevor and Trevor watched something like shame wash over those sharp features.

Shame that he let Trevor see?

That stung enough to reach through the milling panic inside of him. Because perhaps he couldn’t be a part of what they had. But, he hadn’t ever actually thought that… they’d prefer him outside of it completely.

“The two of you returned,” Alucard said, “And then I knew what I wanted. And I arrogantly assumed I knew what you wanted as well.”

“Alucard,” Sypha said, though Trevor could not really tell what her tone was. Some sort of chastisement. Perhaps for taking so long to get the his fucking point.

“There are many terrible things I have done in my life. Things I will carry with me until the day I lie down in my grave, or some industrious champion of humanity puts me there-”

“Like fucking hell they will,” Trevor growled before he could stop himself. But he didn’t have time to feel embarrassed by the outburst because Alucard sent him a soft, sad smile that completely derailed his thoughts and threaded his guts out through his ribs.

Because that smile looked like the fondest goodbye he’d ever seen.

“Trevor I-” and then Alucard was frowning down at the long, shining abomination of a table, as if he couldn’t understand why it was there between them. A long nailed hand reached out and gripped the wood suddenly, the material cracking loud enough to make Trevor jolt beneath Sypha’s hands. And then Alucard was lifting the table over his head and dropping it behind him, like he was ducking beneath a curtain to enter a room.

God, this man was ridiculous, Trevor thought, helpless to resist the warm fondness rising up in his throat.

Then he almost fell off of the bench when Alucard sank to a knee in front of him and said, “Trevor Belmont, I apologize for the terrible and unforgivable wrong I have done you. I subject myself to any and all punishment you deem fit. Even unto death.”

The only sound was the snapping of the fire and the soft slap of Sypha’s palm against her face as Trevor turned to her for explanation.

“Oh my god, you two are-” then she shot to her feet, “Look. Get up, you silly creature, we didn’t rape Trevor!”

Trevor was about to fall off of his bench.

“What?!”

When they both looked at him, he realized that had been his voice. And so of course he kept talking.

“Ra- what- Rape?! What the fuck?”

Alucard rose to his feet now, the two of them standing side by side watching him splutter.

Then Alucard spoke, “The night in the dragon’s house. We never asked you if you were willing to lie with us.”

“Lie with you?” Trevor blurted, “I had the fuck of my life is what I did. Came half the fluid in my body through my aching purple dick is definitely what the fuck I did. I wasn’t fucking raped.”

Alucard glanced at Sypha who had the most impermeable expression on her face. It almost looked like some unholy combination of pissed off and smug.

Then Alucard looked back at him, spreading his pale hands, “The appearance or even existence of ejaculate in a bed is not evidence of consent. And you never accepted our touch again after that. Not in that way.”

Shame like a shard of ice through his gut. Because all this time? He was worried about feeling a little lonely. And Alucard was worried he was a fucking rapist. 

Trevor wasn’t sure how much more of a shit he could actually be to these people. 

These people he would lay out his heart on a plate for if they needed  it.

“Of course, that is completely fine,” Sypha said quickly and firmly, “Sex between all of us should happen on your terms, if that’s even what you want from us. What I think Alucard needs is to discuss what did and didn’t happen that night. If you could do that. For him.”

Trevor had no idea what the fuck this conversation was. It didn’t sound even remotely like the one he’d seen coming at his head like a forger’s hammer. This sounded… well it sounded like something completely different. Though he had no clue what that might be.

“What was the question again?” Trevor croaked.

Alucard blinked and something seemed to ease in his body. And it felt like the man Trevor had been living with for weeks had finally stepped into the room.

“The night we all spent together, in the dragon’s house, and the things we did with you. Were they completely and entirely voluntary?”

Trevor swallowed as his brain was filled with the smell of their skin, cool and hot by turns, the sound of their breathing in his ears. The ache of holding them desperately close to his skin.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I voluntarily moaned like a banshee on fire. But did I want to be there coming my fucking brains out into your mouth? Then of fucking course.”

Alucard jerked back like he’d been slapped. Then he took a breath and lowered his face into his hand like he had a headache.

Trevor looked at Sypha who was studying Alucard very closely.

And then they heard it.

Laughter.

Bright, soft, snorting laughter.

It brought a confused smile to Trevor’s face and dropped Sypha’s shoulders as she gave a relieved sigh.

“Yeah, ok. I’m a delight to converse with, I get it. Keep on laughing.”

Trevor’s arms flew up as he suddenly had a lap full of tall leggy blond drawing him up in a painful hug.

A voice that felt cold against his neck but sounded so impossibly warm said, “You are a delight to converse with. And I will not stop laughing. But do I have permission to kiss you?”

Trevor pulled in a sharp breath, trying to get his heart beating again. Because somehow it was both stopped and suddenly going a mile a minute at the exactly the same time.

“Y-yeah. Sure. Any time. No big deal-”

And then cool, soft lips were nipping at the corner of his mouth, a ragged breath ghosting over his skin. Trevor didn’t know what else to do but reach up and grip the back of Alucard’s shirt and soak in the affection that was shooting through him like blinding lightning.

Then a hand reached out and grounded him by sliding smoothly through his hair.

He swung a hand out blindly and grasped at Sypha’s thigh. Trying to hold on, to not fly away into the stars that were bursting from his chest.

Then Alucard was drawing back as his arms snaked around Trevor’s chest, forcing his back to arch, and his chest to press tight against Alucard’s.

“Thank you, Trevor,”. He breathed, bumping his forehead against Trevor’s cheekbone like a cat.

“Ah, yeah,” Trevor managed to mumble.

Sypha snorted and her hand in his hair pulled his head back. Her warm fingers touched lightly on his chin, “May I kiss you as well, Treffy?”

“Oh god why.”

She laughed but didn’t move closer.

He trembled in her hold, warm and trapped and hungry.

“Yes, please, fucking get closer to me. Never go away. Fuck,” he finally gasped out.

And then she was laughing in a kiss that was all tongue and teeth and a matching hunger to his own that he helplessly opened to.

He heard a moan as Alucard’s head dipped down and then there were teeth. On his neck.

Trevor’s groan vibrated against both of their lips and he heard Alucard gasp for breath.

Sypha finally pulled back from the kiss. She looked down him, at both of them and clicked her tongue.

“One more thing before I drag you both to my room and have my wicked way with you,” she said.

That drew some of Alucard’s attention away from Trevor’s neck, because he gave one last hungry lick to Trevor’s pulse point and lifted his head away. Trevor almost tugged him right back but Sypha was talking and he needed to pull himself together and stop being pathetic. They were offering him sex, fucking mind blowing sex and he could feel himself dissolving into the needy, helplessly useless bundle of nerves he remembered from last time. If he wanted this a third time, he needed to get it together, damn it.

“Trevor,” Sypha said, pulling his attention back, “Last time. We fucked you. Did a proper job of it too. But this time…Alucard. What will we be doing with him this time?”

“I…” Alucard’s sleepy yellow eyes looked as sex stupid as Trevor felt, and they hadn’t even started. Those yellow eyes blinked and then shifted to lock with Trevor’s. He felt that look like a claw closing around his heart. A claw made of fire.

“This time,” Alucard breathed as he shifted achingly closer to Trevor on his lap, “This time,” his hand came up to run gently, down his chest, “If you would permit us,we would like to make love to you.”

Trevor was pretty sure these two people were going to kill him.

But he didn’t tell them about the light that was bursting inside him at those words like a finger poked through the oiled paper covering of a window.

Instead he said, “Isn’t that just a fancy phrase for fucking?”

Alucard looked like his brain had just tripped. And then he growled and bared his teeth at Trevor, hands coming up to catch his face in his cool hands, claws scrapping at his stubble.

“No,” he purred, “It is not a fancy phrase for fucking. It means I want to keep you. Sypha wants to keep you. And we want you to know that we want to live our lives with you. Doing this and anything else you want to do.”

Trevor’s jaw snapped shut at that, clenched so tight he thought his teeth were going to break.

“Do you want us, Trevor?” Sypha asked, her hands running through his hair, down his side,“Do you want us to love you?”

Trevor couldn’t. Couldn’t hold it in. There was just. So much clawing inside of him. He didn’t know what was happening. Why it was happening. But his answer. That he knew.

He closed his eyes and ducked his face down to Alucard’s neck, where it was dark and he was curtained in by golden hair. His hand swept up and down Sypha’s thigh where he had been holding onto her.

“Yes,” he said against cool skin, “Yes I want that. Please.”

Alucard’s claws drew soft, tickling lines up his back that made him tremble as Sypha hummed softly against his hair.

“Of course we will,” she said, “We love you.”

Alucard hummed in agreement against his ear.

And Trevor wasn’t going to fucking cry. Not right now. Maybe later. After they’d made him bleed out come like a fucking stuck pig again.

God hiding under a nun’s bed, he was so fucking good at plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it :) Come visit me in the comments and tell me what you thought!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I wrote this in a delirium of insomnia and skittles. I hope that doesn’t show. I need the next season of this show! The ending was so pretty and I hated it :)
> 
> Please come talk to me in the comments! Or over at tumblr where I am also neverwaswise


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